From mud huts, umqomboti and straightback to penthouses, expensive weaves and moet!

Growing Up – Chapter 57

Seeing a grown and self respecting man like Philani on his knees begging me to marry him was not a pretty sight. The last few months of our relationship he didn’t really beg me, let alone show me that he cares. I was slowly accepting that he didn’t love me and I actually thought he would be relieved that I was not going to be a part of his life anymore. The last thing I expected him to do was to beg me and fight for our relationship. Unfortunately there was nothing left to fight for, I had made up my mind, and I was going to marry Apostle Bae. As much as I loved Philani and I convinced myself that he was the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, he made it clear to me that he doesn’t want to get married.

Sihle came rushing to the kitchen and asked “Hlengiwe what’s taking you so long? Who was at……….” she paused and went back to the lounge as soon as she saw Philani on the floor.

“Philani please stand up and stood acting like a fool.”

He stood up, looked at me straight in the eyes and said “Hlengiwe you know I love you, I have always loved you and I will always love you. I would rather be a fool than to lose what we have. Let’s go to your room and talk properly, I don’t want people to hear us when we talk.”

“No Philani, we will not be going to my room.”

“Please Hlengy,” he said, “I just want us to talk, nothing more. I need to understand a few things.”

I didn’t want to talk or explain myself or my decisions, but it’s the least I could do for so went to my room. He sat on my bed, and I decided to remain standing, just so to keep a reasonable amount of space between us.

“Philani I know this doesn’t seem fair to you, but I am going to marry the Apostle. He is the one I am going to spend the rest of my life with and the sooner you accept this, the better.”

“But baby you can’t expect me to accept that my Pastor and my woman have made me a fool for months and dated behind my back. Now you are engaged……..since when do people get engaged to their side nigga’s? Or I was the side nigga’s all along? How did this relationship start?”

I told him everything about the relationship, right from the beginning until the end.

He said “Yoh Hlengiwe, I trusted you so much, never in my life did I imagine that you would cheat on me. I thought our relationship was better than that. How could you cheat on me with my Apostle, a man that I trusted? What kind of a woman are you Hlengiwe?”

In an attempt to defend myself, I said “ Don’t ask me what kind of a woman I am because I was very faithful to you, more than faithful, until you cheated on me with Lerato. I forgave you the 1st time, but you continued cheating on me with her. What is even worse is that you have slept with someone I considered my friend, so please don’t act all righteous. You and I both betrayed each other.”

He looked at me with so much pain, he then said we should pray because the devil was attacking our relationship, which was funny because during our relationship we hardly prayed together. We prayed a lot at the beginning of our relationship, we even sent each other daily scripture, we were the perfect ‘Godly’ couple, but our commitment to God within the relationship died down as time progressed. It was unfair for him to want us to pray now because things weren’t going his way.

Philani prayed “Father God, we come before You and we thank You for Your love and Your grace. Lord please help my woman, Hlengiwe and save her from making a big mistake. Please restore our love for each other and…………..”

As he was praying I wondered how many people in the world were praying in that moment and how God managed to hear all their prayers. Just imagine millions of people making noise and asking you for different things, some of those people probably only pray when they are in trouble and forget about you when they are happy. Ay I wasn’t going to survive if I was God.

Philani interrupted me by asking “Hlengiwe did you pray? I didn’t hear your voice sweetheart. Do you realise how important it is for us to pray?”

“I didn’t pray, there is nothing we should be praying about. Philani our relationship is over and we will never get back together again.” With that said, I asked him to leave. He didn’t want to leave and insisted on talking to me, when he saw that I wasn’t interested in talking to him, he decided to leave. Before he walked out of the house he said “I hope you are sure about the decision you are making.Goodbye Hlengiwe!” I have said a lot of goodbyes to a lot of people but this one hurt me deeply. It felt so final, it felt like I was losing a big part of my life. But it was necessary for us to have a final goodbye because I was going to start a new life with Apostle Bae.

A few weeks passed and I haven’t seen Philani for a while. He didn’t even call or text me, not that I cared, but I was so used to talking to him or at least receiving a message from him. Apostle Bae and I were very great and we were enjoying each other. I told the twins about my engagement, but they didn’t seem too surprised or happy about it. I assumed that they probably knew before I told them, which is highly possible because Thandiwe was dating Bonginkosi. Even though they weren’t happy for me, they respected my decision and tried to act like they were happy for me.

I spent a lot of time with them in the past weeks because we were preparing for the wedding, which was taking place on this particular day. The morning of the wedding day was filled with excitement and joy. Everything was surprisingly going well, which was rare because most of the time when there are weddings, there is something that goes wrong. While I was busy applying make-up on the bride, Thandiwe asked

“Thando are you sure about getting married? I mean are you sure that you want to spend the rest of your life with Mlu, the guy who turned his back on you when you were pregnant and cheated n you with Tsiamo? How sure are you that he is going to be faithful to you?”

“Mara Thandiwe this is not the time to ask such questions.” Sihle said.

“No Sihle, this is the perfect time to ask because she still has time to change her mind. I’m not asking because I’m trying to mess things up, I just want to make sure that she really wants to do this. I don’t trust this Mlu.” Thandiwe said, to which Thando responded

“Thandiwe this isn’t about you, whether you trust him or not is irrelevant. I am the one he is going to spend his life with. I love Mlu and he loves me, yes he has made mistakes but we are over that now and he has proved himself and his loyalty to me. I am not going to discuss this anymore.”

Thandiwe then said “I’m asking because I care, I don’t want him to hurt you.”

Thando kept quiet for a while, as though she was thinking about what to say, then she spoke up and said “Really Thandiwe? You are asking because you care? We spoke about this already and I assured you that I am sure about getting married, now I don’t understand why you feel the need to talk about this right now. I’m starting to believe the things have been saying about you all along.”

“Things people have been saying about me?” Thandiwe asked, “What have they been saying about me?”

This was definitely not going to end well, I had to try to end this conversation before it gets heated.

“Thando, I’m done with your make-up, Thandiwe you are up next”

“Hlengiwe please wait, I want to know what people have been saying about me and why this sister of mine has never told me.”

“I never tell you what people say about you because I know that you love to overreact,” Thando said, “people have been telling me that you are jealous of me, even my husband told me to be careful of you, I thought they were crazy because you are my twin. But now I think they were right, I can see that you are jealous. Thandiwe you are the one who made the stupid choices in your life, and now you are acting like this because I’m living the life you were also supposed to live. You have your Bonginkosi and I never try to make you feel stupid for loving him. So please leave me alone and let me enjoy my life and stop trying to mess things up for me.”

Ehhhhhhh I never thought I’d see the day the twins fight, they were too tight and they loved each other. Wait, did Thando just say ‘my husband’……………..hahahaahah but love changes us ne. Thandiwe might be many things but I don’t think she was jealous of her sister. maybe she was a bit envious of her achievements, which is totally normal. Thandiwe loved Thando very much and she always wanted to protect her from any pain. I understood why she didn’t trust Mlu, he was a player, a liar and now we just found out that he is a gossip as well. Thandiwe was very hurt by Thando’s words, I could see her trying to fight back the tears.

“Wow Thando, out of all the people in the world why would I be jealous and want to mess things up for you? This silly excuse of a man you call a husband will never love you or care for you the way I do………” before Thandiwe could finish what she was saying, Thando interrupted her by saying

“Silly excuse of a man? Are you calling my man a silly excuse of a man? You know what Thandiwe if you can’t respect my man, then maybe you shouldn’t be part of our lives.”

I know we should protect our men from our families but that doesn’t mean we must remove our families from our lives, Thando was surprisingly being dramatic, maybe it was just the wedding jitters.

“You know what Thando, I will make things better for you and your precious husband, I will not be part of your lives and I won’t even be part of your wedding.”

“Great!!! We don’t need anyone with negative energy at our wedding.” Thando said, then Thandiwe searched for her car keys, then stormed out.

After she stormed out, their mother walked in to the room and asked us why Thandiwe was so angry, Thando just simply said “Thandiwe is being Thandiwe and I don’t have time for her drama, not today.”

Their mother took her phone and tried to call Thandiwe, while she was trying to call her, we heard a car crash and it was in the yard. When we looked out the window, it was their mother’s car and Thandiwe was on the Drivers seat!!!!!!